Early one September three friends spend the weekend at a remote cabin by Dead Water Lake. With only a pale moon to light their way, they row across the water in the middle of the nightóbut only two of them return. In his ninth investigation, following Glass Key award winner Karin Fossum's The Water's Edge, Inspector Sejer is called in when the body of the third friend is discovered. He is troubled by the apparent suicide and has an overwhelming sense that the surviving pair has something to hide, yet weeks pass without any further information. Then, in a nearby lake, the body of another teenage boy floats to the surface.

"Tautly told in a crisp translation ... the story is a riveting exploration of the consequences of crime, a whydunnit rather than the traditional whodunnit."óIrish Times